This mango jerk chicken is extra delicious thanks to mango juice in the marinade, and the whole meal is super simple because the rice is cooked on the grill, too!

While it technically won’t be summer for another month, it’s already felt like summer here in Chattanooga for several weeks. Ben and I got the grill set up at our new place, and I’m eager to cook as many meals as possible entirely outside. It’s so much easier to keep the kitchen clean and cool when you make your whole meal on the grill! For this dinner, we’re marinating chicken breasts in jerk seasoning and a generous glug of mango juice, and pairing them with rice cooked on the grill and then mixed with fresh mango, cilantro, and peas.

I always have so much fun shopping at Cost Plus World Market Hamilton Place–since there are so many gourmet food items, beautiful linens, kitchen essentials, and tableware all in one spot, it is pretty hard to get me out of there once I walk in. And of course, they have everything you need for grilling. They’re also often sampling something delicious to sip or nibble on while you shop. Thanks to the samples, I got to make sure this mango juice was super tasty before I bought it! You can find your local Cost Plus World Market store here.

I am a huge fan of Vietnamese food. When Ben and I lived in Boston, our neighborhood had a lot of Vietnamese families and businesses. There was a great little supermarket within walking distance where I could pick up everything from fish sauce to rice paper wraps to long stalks of fresh lemongrass. One of our favorite restaurants, Pho Hoa, was just blocks away. I usually ordered the house special vermicelli plate. It had pretty much everything: grilled pork, shrimp on sugarcane, meatballs, grilled scallions, pickled carrots, chopped peanuts, and even a sliced spring roll all on top of vermicelli. It also came with rice paper wraps and a bowl of hot water so you could make your own fresh rolls.

These fast and easy Vietnamese lettuce wraps are loosely based on the flavors of that dish. Instead of vermicelli and rice paper wraps, we’re using fresh leaves of lettuce with a little jasmine rice inside to soak up the saucy beef. You could definitely use rice noodles or cauliflower rice instead if you prefer! The beef is quickly cooked with a little garlic and a sauce that combines tamari (or coconut aminos), fish sauce, honey, and sambal oelek. The result is an umami-packed flavor with just the right balance of sweet, salt, spice, and funk.

Pressure cooker ropa vieja is a time-saving version of the traditional Cuban beef dish, and is naturally gluten and dairy free. There’s also a slow cooker version! This post is sponsored by Pomí in partnership with Honest Cooking.

Have you tried ropa vieja? Don’t worry about the fact that the name is Spanish for “old clothes”–this is supremely delicious comfort food, with nothing old or ragged about it. To make this pressure cooker ropa vieja, beef is quickly seared, then cooked until tender in an addictive sauce made with Pomí tomatoes, bell peppers, onion, garlic, smoked paprika, and other spices. Next, capers, raisins, and pimiento peppers are added for pops of color, sweetness, and tart, briny flavor. The result is a dish so soothing and satisfying that Ben and I aren’t even close to being tired of it, despite having eaten three giant batches over the past two weeks.

No pressure cooker? Don’t fret. This ropa vieja is just as delicious made in a slow cooker. I was surprised to find the two versions indistinguishable in taste and texture, so it’s really just a question of how much time you have and which appliance you want to use.

I used Pomí Organic Strained Tomatoes for this recipe. They’re similar to crushed tomatoes and provide all the great umami-packed flavor of fresh tomatoes grown in the Italian sunshine. (By the way, I also tested this recipe with Pomí’s chopped tomatoes and they worked great, too!) I love that they’re organic and non-GMO certified. If you’re interested in more recipes using Pomí tomatoes, you can download their free e-cookbook right here.

This easy one-pot turmeric chicken and rice is pure winter comfort food, with warming Indian spices and plenty of vegetables.

I work with kids as a speech therapist during the day, and I remember a while back I asked one of my kids what his favorite food was and he said, “chicken and rice”. I remember thinking, “Really? What’s so special about chicken and rice?”

Well, I am here to literally eat my words. Chicken and rice cooked together, especially with turmeric and other warming spices, a generous splash of wine, and some pops of colorful veggies, definitely qualifies as favorite-food material. Plus this dish is made with bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, which are my absolute favorite cut of chicken. And you only have to use one pan! There is basically nothing not to love about this dish.

One-pot turmeric chicken and rice is going to be on my dinner menu pretty much every week for the rest of the cold months. Turmeric is a vibrant superfood that gives great color and flavor to the chicken and the rice. It goes perfectly with a bit of smoked paprika, coriander, cumin, and just the tiniest touch of cinnamon. If you like Indian food, you’ll notice this dish tastes a lot like biryani. I added onion, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, and carrots with the rice for vegetal goodness, and raisins, peas, scallions, and cilantro for extra pops of flavor and freshness toward the end of cooking.

Who needs takeout when you can make your own gluten-free Thai basil noodles with beef in less than 30 minutes?

How do you feel about fat noodles? My love for them runs pretty deep. I was a fan of pad thai when I first tried it and I still think it’s really tasty, but the minute I took my first bite of pad see ew I switched camps. Something about those wide, flat rice noodles really does it for me. And lately, with my growing love for spicy food, thai basil noodles (otherwise known as drunken noodles or pad ki mao) have become my new favorite.

I made these thai basil noodles with store-bought rice noodles, but if you don’t eat rice, I’ve got a solution for you. Check out my paleo pad see ew recipe, which uses homemade tapioca flour crepes cut into strips instead of noodles. They’re really delicious and a great stand-in for rice noodles if you’re avoiding all grains. Add the homemade noodles at the end of step 4 below, after the eggs are scrambled in–they’re soft to begin with so they don’t need much time cooking with the rest of the ingredients.

This thai basil noodles with beef recipe is quick and weeknight-friendly, which is what I’m all about lately since things are so busy at my day job. I see kids starting at 8:30 in the morning until 6 or 6:30 in the evening, and since they’re half-hour appointments and I’m booked pretty much back to back, I often see 16 or 17 different children in one day. (In fact, I almost feel like I’m leading a double life: from Monday to Thursday when I work, my brain is filled to the brim with speech and language therapy thoughts and what else I need to be doing to help all of my kids. And from Friday to Sunday it’s food, photos, more food, and more photos, with a little bit of writing sprinkled in.) When I get home at the end of a work day, I can barely bring myself to preheat an oven or make anything that takes longer than half an hour. (I also can barely stay up past 9 pm. Is that normal for someone who’s thirty? I can’t even keep my eyes open long enough to watch Game of Thrones when it’s actually on! Please tell me I’m not alone here.)

An easy and flavorful meal made from pantry staples, curry butter shrimp

takes ten minutes to make and is gluten-free and paleo-friendly.

I’ve kind of been boycotting grocery stores. Weekend before last I went to Florida for a wedding, and since getting back I have not set foot in one. I finished up my last week of my last internship for graduate school this past Friday, we’re getting ready to move down to Chattanooga this coming weekend, and I’m exhausted. Ben has been kind enough to pick up essentials like coffee, eggs, fruit, and bacon for us, but the eggs ran out yesterday.

What’s a girl to do without any eggs for breakfast and with a long day of packing ahead of her? The answer is definitely not grocery shopping. The answer is curry butter shrimp! Yes, I ate this at ten in the morning. No, I have no regrets. #dinnerforbreakfast may not be mainstream yet, but just you wait and see!

I didn’t do a 30 Minute Mondays post yesterday because I wanted to announce my cookbook (Paleo Planet is available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and indie bookstores near you!). This is even better, though, because this is like 10 Minute Wednesday–not as alliterative, but much faster. Not counting the rice or cauliflower rice, this meal comes together in just ten minutes. (And, true confession, I didn’t even make this rice. It’s left over from the Indian food we ordered last night.)

Curry butter shrimp is a flavorful pantry recipe that requires almost no chopping (except for the cilantro–but if you’re really anti-chop you could just break that up into little sprigs). Melted butter or ghee is mixed with Thai curry paste to form a fragrant sauce for cooking the shrimp. A tiny bit of maple syrup and fish sauce add just enough sweetness and umami to complement the rich butter and spicy curry.

Most people love simple recipes. I’m actually the opposite–I want the things I cook to be a little bit of a process. Nothing insane, but a few different components. I love the act of cooking, and I usually don’t want it to be over too quickly.

This chorizo chicken is the best of both worlds. If you want it to be super simple and quick, you can buy a jar of roasted red peppers or even leave them out. You can also serve this with a tossed salad instead of the rice. If you’re looking to have a little fun, though, you can roast your peppers on an open flame.

I mean, there aren’t any actual bones in there to pick, but I’m trying to say I have a problem with them. Ninety percent of the time I eat boneless, skinless chicken breasts, they’re no good! Dry, flavorless, and boring. One hundred percent of the time, I would much prefer chicken thighs.

(Side note: Back when I was a kid and McDonald’s still used dark meat in some of their chicken nuggets, I would refuse to eat the white meat ones. I would actually take a bite out of each nugget to check and only eat the ones that passed muster, which was usually 2-3 per order. I was a super fun kid. Thanks, Mom, for putting up with me!)

Anyway, chicken thighs are one of my go-tos (and luckily, McDonald’s chicken nuggets no longer are). I love bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs for pan-searing and roastingorbraising. I am even willing to go to the trouble of deboning thighs myself to make Nom Nom Paleo’s amazing cracklin’ chicken. And I love boneless, skinless chicken thighs for grilling and making curries. They’re moister and more flavorful than breasts, and won’t dry out even if you overcook them slightly. I’m super paranoid about making sure my poultry is fully cooked, so I like that extra flexibility.